Shirreff'h Tour through North America. 189 



Art. II. A Tour through North America, together ivith a Compre- 

 hensive Vieiv of the Canadas and the United States, as adapted Jbr 

 Agricultural Emigration. By Patrick ShirrefF, Farmer, Mungos- 

 wells, East Lothian. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1835. 



(^Continued from Vol. XI. p. 199.) 



The following remarks will account for the state in which 

 Hyde Park is kept, and for the general inattention to neatness 

 throughout America : — 



" The progress of a people in refinement and taste, manifested in a com- 

 bination of nature and art, is commonly the work of time, and the decoration 

 of grounds an unproductive investment of capital. Thus, the residences of 

 England, having descended for ages in the same line, without the power of 

 possessors changing their destination, may be said to represent the accu- 

 mulated savings, labours, and tastes of many generations. In America the 

 country has not been long possessed by the present owners, and property does 

 not necessarily descend in the same line ; and if to these causes be added the 

 high price of labour and the scarcity of capital, the state of the residences will 

 be sufficiently accounted for. Dr. Hosack has great merit in what he has 

 accomplished, but it is mockery to compare his grounds, in point of embellish- 

 ments, with the fine places in Britain, which have originated in circum- 

 stances which America is not likely soon to experience. 



" Throughout the whole of my transatlantic tour, the inhabitants of the 

 country manifested perfect indifference to the beauties of nature. It was 

 rarely I could learn the name of a plant, with the exception of trees. Nur- 

 serymen, seedsmen, and farmers were, generally, unacquainted with varieties, 

 and, with the exception of two or three individuals, no one seemed interested 

 in the matter. Rhododendrons grow as plentifully in many parts of the eastern 

 states as furze in Britain ; yet I saw vast numbers of this plant shipping at 

 Liverpool for Philadelphia, although millions of the same variety could have 

 been obtained for the trouble of lifting, at no great distance from the city. 

 Gardens and nurseries were overrun with weeds, and did not display beauty 

 either in decoration or arrangement. 



" The French Canadians, of the ordinary classes, almost invariably live in 

 block houses, with large windows, that seem ill constructed, externally and in- 

 ternally, for economising heat, which the nature of the climate and scarcity of 

 fuel render so desirable. They have a clean appearance, being often white- 

 washed with lime ; and the window-boards and roofs are occasionally painted 

 of different colours, and seldom harmonise with the house. A tree or shrub 

 is never found in their gardens, and an orchard, except in the neighbourhood 

 of the mountains, is almost unknown. 



" Colonel Talbot's residence, near St. Thomas, on Lake Erie, in Canada, 

 may be described as a cluster of mean wooden buildings, consisting of dwelling- 

 houses, stables, barns, pigsties, and cattle sheds, constructed and placed 

 seemingly without regard either to convenience or effect, commanding a view 

 of Lake Erie, from which it is distant about 200 3'ards, and at the mouth of 

 Otter Creek, a small brook, with clay banks of considerable height. The clay 

 banks behind the colonel's house have a barren and naked appearance, while 

 the lake in front is too near. The situation, nevertheless, has capabilities to 

 make a fine place, when taste shall build a habitation. The garden, which 

 was badly kept, contained some fine apple and pear trees, which we viewed 

 from the outside of the fence. There were a few weeping willows, the first I 

 saw in Canada, and which raised the colonel considerably in my estimation, as 

 they are not, I believe, indigenous to the country. 



" After dining at Columbus, I strolled into the woods north of the village 

 in search of the pawpaw fruit, which I had heard much extolled by some of 



